this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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The problem with this idea is that it assumes everyone has the exact same capabilities. The game might be completely off the table for some players and I think that would be a real shame because it's an excellent game.
There are people that wouldn't be able to beat it even if they took advantage of all those things. It also means you get two different experiences depending on your abilities. One of them can be a well paced challenging game and the other is a grindy slog that always feels unfair.
I don't think soulslikes are a game type you will enjoy. Trying and failing to beat the same boss twenty times before you eek out a victory with 1hp left is the normal and expected course of gameplay. It is the core gameplay loop. If you don't find joy in that then this is not your genre in the same way that people who don't enjoy jumping on platforms should skip platformers and people who dislike shooting people should probably not invest time in fps games.
Cool story. I played and enjoyed Elden Ring. I don't think it's a crazy idea for the people who physically can't play the game as it is to have the same experience I had.
These arguments always boil down to "it's not for you" or "get good". Adding a difficulty option to the game should not be this controversial. The fact the developers considered variable difficulty so much in the design of the game shows that it's not meritless, but turn that same idea into an accessibility option in the settings and people just vehemently disagree for some reason.
What kind of accessibility options would you add, were you given a team of developers and tasked with doing so?
Honestly, just more lenient timing would do wonders. Not everyone has the same reaction times.
I'm not arguing for making it a silly hack and slash or fundamentally changing the game. I know dying is a part of it, I played and enjoyed the same game everyone else did. I just think there's ways to make that same game more accessible.
it's genuinely easy
just make dodge iframes longer, make attacks scale in speed slightly based on accessibility options, maybe even add attack indicators so players don't need to have the camera actively on a boss to realize they're attacking (reducing manual dexterity needed to understand what's going on). increase player damage output to lower the mental endurance and total effort needed in each attempt against each enemy and boss. make level loop somewhat faster so players get rewards more often to encourage them through what might be more attempts than an average player, and allow them to access the options you mentioned earlier easier. add automatic-execution accessibility options for techniques that require specific timing like dodge rolling or parrying, plus options to just increase the windows for those like mentioned earlier for iframes, for those who can still execute them but have more difficulty doing so than an average player. add high contrast and visibility settings so they can see better in harder to navigate areas. add accessibility markers/outlines to point out enemies and objects (not yellow paint quest lines, just ways to make enemies and objects easier to see). add options for some kind of minimap or some other solution to make navigation in confusing spaces easier for players who have a higher than average difficulty understanding them. add ability to disable or enable certain kinds of attacks or threats that player is incapable of dealing with due to their nature (ie hidden traps that aren't fun for someone who has vision impairment due to them being somewhat hidden making finding them impossible for them, and making them easier to see making them too easy to be relevant)
This topic comes up so often because there are people who enjoy the game but want difficulty options. I guess I just don't understand how it would ruin the charm.
It comes up so often around Souls because there's like a decade of discourse around this and Jim Stephanie sterling saying she would be fine with an easy mode and G*mers getting angry at her for it is like half of the historical context
you are able to enjoy the game because you only have to try and beat the boss twenty times before eeking out that difficulty. a disabled player could have to take a thousand to infinity number of tries and even if it's only a hundred or two hundred more than a "normal" player they're still fundamentally having a different experience than you. you are drip-fed dopamine in a way you enjoy because the game takes just enough attempts at each challenge to make it very rewarding. if it takes too many extra attempts than it becomes unrewarding no matter what the experience is supposed to be or even how much willpower you have.
trying to beat the same boss over a thousand times just becomes actual, present real life mental suffering someone would only go through if they were forced to, no matter how close they were to the enlightened dark souls mindset
The first point is fair, you can't reasonably expect any one game to be beatable by every single person. But the resistance from the devs seems more philosophical than pragmatic. Difficulty options are often requested, and to their credit it's something the developers considered a lot more with Elden Ring, why they won't just add some optional difficulty settings seems bizarre.
As for grinding, no, that's not what I consider grinding. But you definitely can hit a wall in Elden Ring where you've done all the content you can find but still can't progress anywhere. And running around the map is only interesting for so long. Go to youtube, there's plenty of 'best farming location' videos. Elden Ring can be grindy if you just don't meet their arbitrary skill level.
celeste still attempts to have accessibility options and they have an immense positive impact ffs
it's a literal slippery slope argument to make a conflation that "allow more people to play a game" = "abandon everything to allow EVERYONE EVER BORN to play a game"